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		<title>The MetroPCS tablets are being phased out along with their data plans. &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2016/09-September/29.xhtml&gt;</title>
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		<header>
			<h1>The MetroPCS tablets are being phased out along with their data plans.</h1>
			<p>Day 00572: Thursday, 2016 September 29</p>
		</header>
<p>
	Current countdowns:
</p>
<ul>
	<li>20 unfinished weblog entries in <a href="/en/weblog/2016/07-July/">July</a></li>
	<li>18 days until my old domain registrar can no longer counter my charge dispute</li>
</ul>
<p>
	I checked out the list of schoolwork that I have to get done this week, and it turns out that this is a slow week.
	Figuring that I had plenty of time, I took a trip down to the local MetroPCS store to ask them about their tablet.
	The problem is that I seem to keep moving to a new city every school year.
	I&apos;m moving to Sweet Home this time, which is T-Mobile&apos;s coverage zone, but last year, I was in Coos Bay, where T-Mobile&apos;s towers don&apos;t yet reach.
	MetroPCS doesn&apos;t have a bring your own tablet option and I can&apos;t afford to buy a new MetroPCS tablet if I leave the T-Mobile service area before the tablet plan has saved me enough to pay for the tablet then move back into the T-Mobile coverage zone.
	With that in mind, I walked in and asked the representative if MetroPCS tablets can be <strong>*reactivated*</strong> if I leave the coverage zone and return.
	They explained that yes, the tablets can be reactivated on the MetroPCS tablet plan, but the tablets are no longer available in that particular store.
	Tablet sales have been too low because people have been buying large smartphone data packages that can cover their tablet usage, then getting their tablets elsewhere.
	I assume that the representative meant that these people are tethering the tablets, but I didn&apos;t ask.
	As MetroPCS doesn&apos;t offer the option to bring a good tablet, it makes sense that people wouldn&apos;t be interested in the tablet plan.
	When I asked where to find a store that did still has the tablets, the representative said that they might only be available online, so I explained that the MetroPCS website says that they&apos;re only available in-store.
	The representative concluded that MetroPCS is probably phasing out the tablets.
	While I don&apos;t like the thought of the tablets being phased out without a bring your own tablet plan being introduced, the evidence that I have does back that up.
	The MetroPCS tablet is no longer findable on the website via internal links.
	One must pull out a search engine to find that page, as it still exists and never got deindexed.
	Additionally, the tablet <strong>*plan*</strong> pages no longer exist on the website.
	Any links to them result in a redirect to the smartphone plan page.
	The representative speculated that there might be a bring your own tablet plan in the future, but with the plan information pages having been removed, this seems unlikely.
	These tablets will be even harder to get in three months when my T-Mobile service that I&apos;ve already paid for ends, so getting a tablet later seems unlikely.
	I could try to find a used tablet, but that comes with two problems.
	First, as I&apos;m not the original owner, I can&apos;t request that it be unlocked.
	I&apos;d need to make sure that the original owner unlocked the tablet before they sold it, and for some reason, I get the feeling that a lot of people don&apos;t unlock their devices, especially low-end devices such as these.
	Second, if the IMEI switch doesn&apos;t bring the plan to the device that I actually want it on, I can&apos;t exactly return the tablet if I didn&apos;t get it directly from MetroPCS.
	I&apos;m not seeing this tablet plan as feasible, so it looks like I won&apos;t be getting a tablet for a great while.
	Finances are tight, so a tablet that doesn&apos;t save me money (or at least not cost anything) is out of the question.
</p>
<p>
	Once I got back home, I started working on the journal assignments that I was supposed to have done yesterday, but that weren&apos;t technically due until today.
	In the first one, I was supposed to choose an area of technological advancement that&apos;s moving globalization along.
	With mobile devices on my mind, I started writing about them.
	In many third-world countries, they are the only access that the people have to the Internet.
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	One area of technological advancement that&apos;s had a huge impact on globalization is mobile communication technologies.
	In some developing countries, Internet access is primarily only available through mobile devices (The Levin Institute, n.d.).
	While many people consider mobile devices to be telephones, many are in fact not telephones at all.
	Anything labeled as a &quot;smartphone&quot; is actually a pocket-sized computer (Williams, 2010).
	With theses computers and the towers needed to connect them to the Internet popping up in third-world countries, the owners of these devices are able to get much closer to the modern age and access the online trove of information that the first world has been enjoying for quite a while.
</p>
<p>
	Not everyone is using these cellular service to its full potential.
	In Africa, the main usage of mobile devices is basic SMS (Pew Research Center, 2015).
	In fact, most of the mobile devices in Africa aren&apos;t computers, but actual telephones (so-called &quot;dumb phones&quot;.
	However, this still helps Africans stay in touch with those that they care about.
	Having towers in the area also allows those that do want to reach out globally to do so by investing in pocket-sized computers.
</p>
<p>
	[I can&apos;t finish this without endorsing actual telephone service and telephone numbers.
	I&apos;ll have to scrap this and find another topic.]
</p>
<p>
	References:
</p>
<p>
	The Levin Institute.
	(n.d.).
	Microsoft Word - tech2011 - glob101techandglob.pdf.
	Retrieved from http://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/126112/mod_book/chapter/94453/glob101techandglob.pdf
</p>
<p>
	Williams, A.
	(2010, January 7).
	&quot;Smart Phone&quot; is a Misnomer: It&apos;s a Computer, not a Phone - ReadWrite.
	Retrieved from http://readwrite.com./2010/01/07/smart-phones-smart-phones-all/
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
	That didn&apos;t go well though, as I quickly learned that the devices aren&apos;t the pocket computers that people here in the United States usually have.
	Instead, they are <strong>*actual telephones*</strong> that just happen to be portable.
	My only two options if I continued on that topic were to either paint the telephone system (and therefore, the telephone number system) in a positive light or paint being able to keep connected with one another in a negative light.
	These pocket telephones are no doubt a step up from not being connected at all, I won&apos;t argue against that.
	However, I refuse to say anything positive about the awful system that is telephony.
	It&apos;s like saying that use of a ferry is a step up from using a raft fashioned from ropes and branches.
	That&apos;s technically very true, but when bridge technology has existed for quite a while, ferries are really nothing to brag about and nothing to hold in high regard.
	My next attempt at that assignment involved discussing peer production.
	I&apos;m not sure how much it really is a technological advancement, so I&apos;m not sure how much it fits the assignment, but it is treated as a technological innovation in last week&apos;s readings and it certainly has impacted globalization.
	I also bundled open source software (not to be confused with free software), as that was another &quot;innovation&quot; mentioned in the readings, and the two go hand-in-hand quite nicely.
</p>
<p>
	I didn&apos;t really run into problems big enough to warrant starting over on the second assignment that I needed to get turned in today, as it was mostly meant to be a self-reflection assignment.
</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/en/coursework/POLS1503/#Unit4">POLS 1503: Globalization</a></li>
<li><a href="/en/coursework/UNIV1001/#Unit4">UNIV 1001: Online Education Strategies</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
	My mother needed to unwind a bit from their first week of work, so they came into my bedroom and discussed a few things with me.
	My mother doesn&apos;t seem to like their new workplace, and has come to the realization that they&apos;re really not as good of a teacher as they thought that they were.
	They&apos;re only getting hired by bad districts that good teachers won&apos;t touch.
	I was thinking the same thing before they landed this job to be honest.
	I mean, my mother can&apos;t even grasp simple concepts, can&apos;t keep causality straight, and doesn&apos;t even have basic computer skills, though computers have become an important part of modern teaching.
	I wasn&apos;t going to ever tell them what I thought because it wouldn&apos;t do any good.
	All it would do is hurt their feelings needlessly, but it seems that they understand now without my help even.
	Apparently, my mother forgot that this job is only until the end of the year too, and was re-informed that it was temporary.
	Now, they say that they wish that they&apos;d known, and that had they known, they might not have accepted the job.
	I know for a fact that they <strong>*would*</strong> take the job even knowing that it&apos;s temporary, not only because I understand that our situation is desperate, but because they told me <a href="/en/weblog/2016/09-September/22.xhtml">when they took the job</a> that it was only until the end of the year.
	We&apos;re either moving again at the end of the school year or my mother&apos;s using this as a way to get their foot in the door and get another job there when the new openings are listed.
</p>
<p>
	Cyrus and Alyssa are coming over this weekend, apparently.
	I wonder how things are going with them.
</p>
<p>
	<strong>*EDIT <a href="https:/en/weblog/2016/12-December/18.xhtml">Day 00652: Sunday, 2016 December 18</a>*:</strong> I&apos;ve moved &quot;learning journal&quot; content to a separate page now, accessible from the <a href="/en/coursework/">coursework</a> section of the website.
</p>
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